Griffons
A griffon egg is about a foot long. It takes about 90 days to hatch, and are kept in a warm place as much as possible. Colder weather can delay hatching, or even kill the embryo if the ambient temperature approaches freezing. However, temperature over 90 degrees can also harm or kill the embryo.
Once hatched, the young's appetite will be voracious, eating about one-fifth their body weight in meat every day until they are a year old. After that, they will eat about ten percent of their body weight per day (on average; they can go days without eating, and then gorge). A newly hatched griffon will weigh about five pounds, and then will grow over the next three years to full size, from five hundred to a thousand pounds, depending on hit points, gaining about twenty pounds a month for the first year, and fifteen to fifty pounds a month, depending on availability to food, for the next two years. A full grown griffon is at least eight feet from beak to haunches, and the larger specimens will be more like twelve feet. Body weight for a full grown adult will range from 500 to as much as 1100 pounds. Their intelligence is between 2 and 4, allowing them to be taught that many actions they can perform on command. Training must commence in the first six months of their life, or they will become irredeemably vicious.
While griffons will eat pretty much any meat, in order to promote growth they need a variety of white meat and red meat. Typical monthly needs for young are average about 600 pounds of meat, and an adult will average about 1500 pounds a month. That works out to about half a cow per young, and about one and a half cows per adult, per month, for a feed cost of about 5 g.p. for young and 15 g.p. for adults.
Training will take up two hours each day, until the end of the first year, after which an hour a day until the end of the second year will finalize training. After that, the trainer can introduce the griffon to a new owner, and teach it to obey commands from that person in one week of training, one hour per day.
Griffons can be trained to do 2-4 of the following, in addition to carrying a rider and performing typical flying movements, and attacking on command. All of the below require the owner to train with them for two weeks; simple flying and such do not.
special attacks, essentially making them double-specialized (+3/+3) in one type of attack (such as claw or bite). They can learn both types, but it costs two of their slots.
a rearing crush, where the mount rears up on hind legs and rakes with both front paws, dealing an additional die of damage on top of both feet’s normal damage.
Charge gives +2 to hit with a trampling attack that does two claw’s worth of damage on a hit, this requires the mount to run for two segments, and pass by the target for at least one segment.
guard will cause them to stay in a position unless told otherwise, or until they get hungry.
In May of 1169, several characters got griffon eggs from nests of a group of griffons they slew. The eggs were about halfway through their gestation period, about six or seven weeks from hatching. Some of them delivered their eggs to Kibbles, who has a Griffagon facility for hatching, raising, and training such creatures (which are a sort of griffon, but much larger and smarter).
Deimos - delivered his egg to Kibbles.
Tashjian - delivered his egg to Kibbles.
Atty - delivered his egg to Kibbles.
Jazdan -
Barathorn -